My New Year’s Resolution: Find More Time (in Kansas)

This year, I’m hoping to find time. Time for all those important tasks in life, of course. I need to stretch more, to cook, to write to my family back home, to pick up my guitar again, and practice my Spanish. I even need to find time, period—I broke my phone before Christmas, and since I don’t own a watch, I have been surviving without a strong sense of what the time of day is for two weeks.

But I’m also aiming to gain time in the biggest athletic challenge I’ve attempted so far. The last two years I’ve competed in the Dirty Kanza 200, an ultra-endurance bike race on gravel roads around Emporia, Kans. In 2017, ...